This week’s Volta a Catalunya marks the start of the definitive countdown to the Giro d’Italia as Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep), Primoz Roglic (Jumbo-Visma) and Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers) begin their final build-up for the first Grand Tour of the 2023 season.
Evenepoel and Roglic are the two stand-out favourites for May, and as the Volta a Catalunya will be their only opportunity for a direct face-off before heading to Italy, the week-long race will be taken as the key reference point to their bigger duel in a little over five weeks.
Initially set to act as Roglic’s debut for 2023 after his operations on his shoulder over the winter, the much-anticipated meeting of the two Giro contenders could have been something of a damp squib if Roglic had headed to Catalunya purely to rub the last of the winter rust off his wheels.
But having started racing earlier, in Tirreno-Adriatico, and having won all three of the toughest stages there as well as the overall, Roglic is clearly in flying form. Even if the subsequent speculation that sparked that he could switch to the Tour de France instead was quickly stamped on by his team management, that kind of result bodes well for both Catalunya and the Giro d'Italia.
At the same time, Remco Evenepoel’s better-than-expected performance in the UAE Tour, where he marked a podium as his goal and then ended up taking the overall win, coupled with his recent Strava-record-busting rides while at altitude in the Teide, also indicate that the reigning World Champion is also on excellent climbing form.
As if that wasn’t reason enough to make the Volta one of the maximum high points of stage racing this season outside the Grand Tours themselves, the presence of Geraint Thomas, a former podium finisher in Catalunya and another major 2023 Giro contender, will considerably add to the interest. Then the sense that the Volta represents a dry run for Italy will be even further boosted by the presence of Joao Almeida (UAE Team Emirates). The former Giro leader’s third place overall in the Volta last year, where Almeida won the toughest mountain stage and briefly held the top spot overall before being caught napping by final winner Sergio Higuita (Bora-Hansgrohe) and Richard Carapaz, raises the chances of the Portuguese racer firing on at least several cylinders in Catalunya this year, too.
Nothing could replicate the Giro in full, of course, and two of the most obvious caveats on drawing too many conclusions from this week in the Pyrenees is that Catalunya is only seven days long, not 21, and its mountain climbs are in no way as hard as the Dolomites or Alps.
But the key difference between Catalunya and Italy will be the lack of time trialling, set to play a huge part in the 2023 Giro. Indeed, Evenepoel’s complete lack of racing against the clock this season other than the team time trial in the UAE Tour (which Soudal-QuickStep won, it should be remembered) is potentially a disadvantage for him come May.
Yet Catalunya has plenty of other opportunities for the Belgian star to lay down some markers before the Giro and its mountain-heavy format is undoubtedly the most important of them. Three summit finishes, two of them extremely difficult climbs to the Pyrenean ski station of Port Ainé on stage 2 and the much less well-known Mirador del Portell/Lo Port in southern Catalunya on stage 5, will be far greater tests than anything Evenepoel has faced since winning the Vuelta a España last year. Furthemore, the climber-heavy Soudal-QuickStep squad the Belgian is bringing to Catalunya to support Evenepoel is strongly indicative of how much of a dress rehearsal for Italy the Volta is considered to be both by him and by his team.
For Roglic, too, Catalunya marks another vital staging post en route to the summer. It's also a chance to measure his strength against Evenepoel in a way that failed to materialize fully last September in the Vuelta after his uneven start and third week crash just when he was hitting top form, and which could even contain an element of unfinished business as a result.
Catalunya is too tough and too prestigious to be simply considered the first major test run for the Giro d’Italia though, and it’s also got too deep a field of GC contenders for other events for that to be simply the case. Well-known as the only WorldTour stage race which regularly brings together top names for all the Grand Tours, local fans will be lamenting the absence of Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates), whose plan to begin his long build-up for the Vuelta a España in the Volta has been scuppered by tendinitis. But the sizable Colombian community in Catalunya will be able to celebrate the late confirmation that Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers) will be present in his return to racing after a difficult start to 2023.
What will increase the interest in Bernal’s presence is that he has an excellent track record in Catalunya - in 2018, the Volta was where he had his breakthrough in WorldTour stage racing before an untimely crash on the last day, and he placed third in 2019, the year he won the Tour. and the same is equally true for many other top names aiming to shine in the 2023 Tour de France.
Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates) is a former winner of Catalunya and has taken two mountain stage wins there, Richard Carapaz (EF Education-Easypost) blew the Volta apart in a two-up attack with Higuita last year, and Mikel Landa (Bahrain Victorious) has recently been on fine form in Tirreno-Adriatico. And Andorra-resident Sepp Kuss (Jumbo-Visma) is another Tour-bound likely to be aiming to make a mark on ‘home soil’ in Catalunya, while last year's Giro d'Italia winner Jai Hindley (Bora-Hansgrohe) is hardly a name that can be ignored, either.
The Giro stars will not have it their own way by a long shot this week in Catalunya, then. And yet more interesting narratives emerging from the Volta will likely include the ongoing stage racing progress of Luke Plapp (Ineos Grenadiers), second in the UAE Tour, what designs veteran Canadian climber Mike Woods (Israel-Premier Tech) has on roads where he regularly trains as well as races. The most notable late none-starter from the Volta is breakaway specialist Thomas de Gendt (Lotto-Dstny), aiming to add another stage win to his already notable Volta total of five this March, but with his plans scuppered by his injury in Paris-Nice.
